Congratulations to the #SEJ2023 Fellows!
The Society of Environmental Journalists and The Uproot Project partnered again this year to offer diversity fellowships (worth up to $2500) to support journalists’ attendance at #SEJ2023 in Boise.
Funding for the #SEJ2023 Diversity Travel Fellowships is provided by MacArthur Foundation, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, RenewPR, Veolia North America, Western States Petroleum Association, Woodwell Climate Research Center and individual donors to SEJ. Donate now to help support diversity at #SEJ2023.
|
Shreya Agrawal
Student, University Southern California (USC)
Shreya Agrawal is a multimedia journalist at USC studying geological sciences, English and journalism. She is the Earth desk editor for USC Annenberg Media. Her work focuses on the environment, politics, and social issues. She hopes to bridge gaps in climate communication and education around the world and report on climate politics in the future.
|
Muizz Akhtar
Freelance Journalist & Digital Content Specialist, Kinder Institute for Urban Research
Muizz Akhtar (they/them/theirs) is a freelance journalist based in Houston, Texas. They are also a digital content specialist at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research. Their area of focus is urban planning and how we design better, more sustainable cities for the future, both in the American South and the Global South. Most recently, Muizz was a fellow at Vox, where they wrote about climate change, urban planning, and public health in the United States and in China. Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Muizz is a journalist with experience in academia, strategic communications, nonprofit community organizations, and electoral campaigns. Above all, they are civically engaged, an aspiring polyglot, and a punster extraordinaire.
|
Taylar Ansures
Reporter, KTVL CBS 10 News
Taylar is a passionate early-career journalist who has survived some of Western history's largest and most devastating wildfires. From living through the 2018 Carr and Camp Fires in Northern California to covering the 2022 McKinney Fire as one of her first significant news events, wildfires and conservation have always been top of mind. She uses her experience and in-depth resource knowledge to help educate those in her newsroom and community when disaster strikes. #SEJ2023 will be her first journalism conference.
|
Ximena Bustillo
Reporter, National Public Radio (NPR)
Ximena Bustillo is a multi-platform reporter at NPR covering politics out of the White House and Congress on air and in print. Before joining NPR, she was an award-winning food and agriculture policy reporter and newsletter author at POLITICO covering immigration, climate, labor, supply chain and equity issues. Ximena got her start in journalism at the Idaho Statesman where she helped spearhead the state's Spanish-language coronavirus news coverage through articles and public web forums. She is a graduate of Boise State University.
|
Britny Cordera
Intern, St. Louis Public Radio
Britny is a published poet, nonfiction writer, and emerging journalist who investigates the intersections between environment, climate change, and (pop) culture. Currently, she is an intern at St. Louis Public Radio. Cordera's work can be found in Grist, The New Territory, Atmos, Next City, and Planet Detroit. She received her MFA from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. When she is not reporting or writing poetry, Cordera teaches for St. Louis Poetry Center and roller skates in her free time.
|
Delgerzaya Delgerjargal
Reporter, TenGer Television
Delgerzaya Delgerjargal is an environmental and data journalist at TenGer Television and a nature essayist at Uhaarliin 7 Honog — the only environmental essay podcast in Mongolia. She has four years of research experience in biodiversity, climate, and agricultural economics from the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Through her work as a journalist, she strives to inform about the causes of climate-related changes people are observing through data.
|
Jocelyn Tabancay Duffy
Reporter, Nexus Media News
Jocelyn Tabancay Duffy is an environmental journalist and video producer based in Oakland, CA. Her work has been featured on The Guardian, NBC, The Intercept, KALW, and PBS. As someone who grew up in a cabin on a dirt road where wildfires were an annual catastrophe, she knows that climate change impacts the most vulnerable first. As part of her master’s thesis at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, she reported on water shortages in Chile and California.
|
Hadeer Elhadary
Freelance Journalist
Hadeer Elhadary is an award-winning climate journalist from Egypt, focusing on biodiversity, sustainability, climate change risks, and solutions for a better future. She is also a trainer and a blogger at the “Climate Story” vlog. She received fellowships on climate change and biodiversity from Metcalf institute - Rhode Island University, Climate Tracker, Free Press Unlimited, the french media development agency “CFI”, Goethe-Institute, Africa21, and the German Foreign Ministry.
|
Fernando “Fern” Figueroa
Student, University of Florida
Fernando “Fern” Figueroa is a junior journalism and sustainability studies major at the University of Florida. He previously reported for the University and Metro desks. Now, he covers the environmental beat on the Enterprise desk. When he's not reporting, you can find him dancing to house music or taking photos on his Olympus.
|
Nicole Foy
Reporter, CalMatters
Nicole Foy is the Central Valley reporter for CalMatters’ California Divide team. She returned home to the Central Valley in 2022 after several years as an investigative reporter in Texas and Idaho, focusing on Latino communities, agriculture and inequity. While in Idaho, she was a 2020 Community Impact Fellow for Stanford University’s John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship program, leading a bilingual COVID-19 reporting collaborative. She graduated from Biola University and is the co-founder of Voces Internship of Idaho, which places Idaho Latino students in paid newsroom internships.
|
Guananí Gómez-Van Cortright
Editorial Fellow, Bay Nature magazine
Guananí Gómez-Van Cortright is a recent graduate of the UC Santa Cruz Science Communication master’s program. She has written for the KQED radio science desk and is currently the first editorial fellow at Bay Nature magazine in Berkeley. She loves to cover living fossils, people working toward environmental solutions, and the tiny but mighty microbes that control the world.
|
Audrey Henderson
Reporter, Energy News Network
Audrey Henderson is an independent writer and researcher based in the greater Chicago area, with advanced degrees in sociology and law from Northwestern University. She specializes in sustainability in the built environment, culture and arts, policy, and related topics. As a reporter for Energy News Network, her coverage focuses on environmental justice and equity. Her work has also been featured in Wallpaper* magazine, the Chicago Reader, GreenBiz, Chicago Architect magazine, Next City, Transitions Abroad, Belt Magazine and other consumer and trade publications.
|
Roshaun Higgins
Reporter, The Times-Picayune | New Orleans Advocate
Roshaun Higgins is an environmental reporter for the Times-Picayune | New Orleans Advocate. He writes primarily about major weather events, environmental justice efforts and coastal restoration projects as a part of the New Orleans newspaper's environmental team, funded by a Walton Family Foundation grant that's managed by the Society of Environmental Journalists. He joined SEJ in 2022 and is a Metcalf Institute alumnus. Born and raised in New Orleans, he cares deeply about the environmental issues Southeast Louisiana residents must face as people more quickly see the effects of climate change. Roshaun has also covered local politics in Appleton, Wisconsin, and culture and entertainment for Offbeat Magazine in New Orleans. When he's not writing, he's often trying to dissuade his orange cat, Garfield, from eating his food.
|
Ayurella Horn-Muller
Climate and Energy Fellow, Axios
Ayurella Horn-Muller is a climate and energy fellow at Axios, covering climate justice. She was previously a freelance environmental journalist and a correspondent at news and research nonprofit Climate Central, with work in The Guardian, NPR, NBC, PBS NewsHour, USA Today and Forbes, among others. Ayurella's debut book SAVIOR OF THE SOUTH, a story of kudzu, climate change and Southern cultural symbolism, will be published by Louisiana State University Press in 2023.
|
Shamsuddin Illius
Chittagong Bureau Chief, The Business Standard (TBS)
Shamsuddin Illius is a print and online journalist based in Chittagong, Bangladesh, who specializes in climate change, environmental, refugee and migration issues. He has been working at The Business Standard (TBS) as the Chittagong Bureau Chief since 2019. Illius also works as a stringer for Agence France-Presse (AFP). Before joining TBS, he was Chief of the Chittagong Bureau at The Independent. His stories have appeared in The Independent, The Business Standard, Agence France-Presse (AFP), The Third Pole, The Scotsman, Unbais The News and more.
|
Amir Khafagy
Report for America corps member, Documented
Amir Khafagy is an award-winning New York City-based journalist. He is currently a Report for America corps member with Documented. Much of Amir's beat explores the intersections of labor, race, class, immigration, environmental justice, and urban policy. His reporting has been featured in The Guardian, Vice, The New Republic, New York Mag, Bloomberg, Prism, Documented, The Appeal, Dame, The American Prospect, Jacobin, and In These Times. A lifelong New Yorker, Amir was born and raised in Jackson Heights, Queens into a working-class, Muslim, immigrant family.
|
Ana Clara Mattiuzzi Martins
Student, University of Florida
Ana Clara Mattiuzzi Martins is a Brazilian national resource conservation student at the University of Florida. She is a world traveler and wildlife enthusiast curious about the environment and the communities built around it. She has worked for a laboratory studying ecological relationships in the Mara river and is currently analyzing camera traps in Madagascar. Under Professor and Author Cynthia Barnett, she worked on a story uncovering the psychology of hurricane evacuations during the aftermaths of Hurricane Ian.
|
Shamira McCray
Reporter, The Post and Courier
Shamira McCray is an environmental reporter for The Post and Courier, South Carolina's oldest and largest news source. She has written about the plight of right whales, wastewater treatment contamination, wildlife threats and hurricanes, among other topics. When she is not covering the environment, Shamira devotes her time to finishing a master's thesis at the University of South Carolina about newspapers' framing of police brutality incidents when Black men are the victims.
|
Karla Mendes
Contributing Editor, Mongabay
Karla Mendes is an award-winning Brazilian journalist working as a Rio de Janeiro-based Contributing Editor for Mongabay. She has been working as a correspondent for international outlets since 2015 and she specialized in covering environmental, land and property rights issues since 2017. Karla has a Master in Investigative and Data Journalism from the University of King’s College, Canada, and an MBA in finance from São Paulo’s Fundação Instituto de Administração (FIA). She is fluent in English, Spanish and Portuguese. In 2020, an article and a documentary film she co-directed and co-produced about the Guardians of the Forest, a group of Indigenous Guajajara who risk their lives to fight illegal loggers to protect their Arariboia Indigenous Territory, won four awards, including Best Explanatory Reporting (Small Newsroom) from SEJ.
|
Clara Migoya
Reporter, The Arizona Republic
Clara Migoya is a reporter for The Arizona Republic covering environmental issues with a focus on agriculture, water and health. Previously she reported on the Arizona-Sonora borderlands for the same newspaper, reporting on a variety of topics, from human smuggling to binational flood events to local economy and arts. She got her start in journalism in Arizona, where she got a master's degree in journalism and got to write for The Arizona Daily Star, La Estrella de Tucson, and High Country News. She hails from Mexico and holds a bachelor degree in environmental sciences.
|
Glory Mushinge
Freelance Journalist
Glory Mushinge is an award-winning Zambian journalist, who writes about a host of environmental, technological, developmental, governance and human rights issues. As a freelance journalist and international correspondent, she had done work for organizations like the Global Press Journal/Institute, Women's International Perspective, Africa Feeds, Genderlinks, Africa24 Media, among others. Glory is currently freelancing for Germany's international public broadcaster, Deutsche Welle (DW), where she is a correspondent. She has recently also gotten involved with Step Up Media in South Africa.
|
Sonia Narang
Freelance Journalist
Sonia Narang is a multimedia journalist who reports on climate change & the environment, women’s rights, and health. Sonia has produced and reported in-depth multimedia projects at PRI's The World, including an award-winning series about women in Nepal and a series on climate change in Fiji. Sonia’s work has also aired on NPR, KALW Radio, the BBC, Washington Post's The Lily, The New York Times, Frontline/World, and other outlets. A native Californian and a sweet tooth, Sonia has a master’s degree from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
|
Melba Newsome
Freelance Journalist
Melba Newsome is an award-winning freelance science, health and environmental writer. Her work has appeared in Yale E360, Scientific American, Science News, Kaiser Health News and Bloomberg, among others. She lives in Charlotte, NC.
|
Cameron Oglesby
Freelance Journalist
Cameron Oglesby is an award-winning journalist dedicated to re-centering the voices, narratives, and knowledge of historically disinvested communities. Her work is grounded in resilience-focused, solutions-focused stories that cover life and land histories, environmental injustices, and equitable paths toward a more sustainable future. Cameron is currently a Master of Public Policy student at Duke University (’23), an environmental justice reporter for Yale Climate Connections, the project coordinator for the Environmental Justice Oral History Project at Duke, and Associate Editor for Earth in Color. She is a PCIC Young Climate Leader of Color fellow, an Uproot Project Environmental Justice Fellow, a Yale Public Voices Fellow on the Climate Crisis, and a Memorial Foundation Social Justice Fellow alum with bylines in The Nation & The Margin, Grist, Environmental Health News, and Southerly & Scalawag Magazines.
|
Neeta Satam
Freelance Photojournalist
Neeta Satam is a photojournalist and a National Geographic Explorer based in Mumbai and Saint Louis, Mo, whose work explores the themes of cultural assimilation, the human condition, and the environment through photography. Her personal history and cultural identity have always influenced both the issues that draw her as a visual journalist and the work itself. The desire to learn the craft of visual storytelling to communicate environmental issues inspired Neeta to pursue a MA in Journalism at the Missouri School of Journalism.
|
Kate Selig
Student, Stanford University
Kate Selig is a junior at Stanford University, where she previously served as the editor-in-chief of The Stanford Daily. She has interned with The Boston Globe, The Mercury News and Mission Local, and her writing has appeared in The Guardian. She will be a climate reporting intern with the San Francisco Chronicle and The Washington Post this spring and summer, respectively. She is thrilled to be attending #SEJ2023 as a diversity fellow.
|
Jeniffer Solis
Reporter, Nevada Current
Jeniffer Solis is an environment & energy reporter for the Nevada Current, a nonprofit news outlet focused on state-level policy in the States Newsroom network. Since starting her career as a full-time reporter in 2018, she has received top honors from the Nevada Press Association for feature writing and the Society of Professional Journalists — Las Vegas for election reporting. She is currently a 2022 National Press Foundation “Widening the Pipeline” Fellow. Jeniffer was born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada where she attended the University of Nevada, Las Vegas before graduating in 2017 with a B.A in Journalism and Media Studies.
|
Miacel Spotted Elk
Freelance Journalist
Miacel Spotted Elk is a freelance writer and fact-checker interested in covering politics, the environment and economy through Indian Country and its dimensions. She has previously worked for High Country News and is currently a Periplus Fellow and an intern with In These Times Magazine. Miacel grew up near Bears Ears and is a Salt Lake City resident. In 2021, she graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in political science.
|
Anita Wadhwani
Senior Reporter, Tennessee Lookout
Anita Wadhwani is a senior reporter at Tennessee Lookout, a Nashville-based nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is an affiliate of States Newsroom. Formerly an investigative reporter at The Tennessean, Wadhwani has spent 20 years covering the impact of public policies on the people and places across Tennessee.
|
Jenny Whidden
Report for America corps member, Daily Herald
Jenny Whidden is a climate change reporter for the Daily Herald and a corps member with Report for America. A Rolling Meadows, Illinois, native, Whidden previously wrote for the Granite State News Collaborative, the Chicago Tribune and the New Jersey Star Ledger before landing back home in northern Illinois to cover the local impacts of climate change for the Herald. Whidden's beat encompasses a range of topics including energy, transportation and conservation. When she isn't writing, Whidden is hiking, reading or spending time with her cat, Princeton.
|
Support SEJ
There are many ways to help sustain SEJ's mission to strengthen the quality, reach and viability of environmental journalism:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
